A love letter to Vitsœ

Rachel Leedham felt compelled to write to us and we felt compelled to share her words...

My first encounter with Vitsœ’s 606 Universal Shelving System was back in 1995, when I was embarking on my career in journalism as features editor of Elle Decoration in Hong Kong. I can pinpoint the date because, 30 years on, I still have the rather dog-eared image I had torn out of a magazine. It shows the beautifully understated sitting room of a London home in which a wall of discreet modular shelving provides an elegant framework for the owners’ books, mementoes and vinyl collection. Next to it I had scribbled a two-word question: good shelving?

Four years later, my French husband, Eric (a construction director and enthusiastic amateur violinist) and I were newlyweds living in north-west London, renting a two-bedroom, top-floor flat close to Hampstead Heath. A friend called to say he was downsizing from his large office-space south of the river, and he had so much Vitsœ shelving that he was going to have to part with some of it. Would we like a run of shelves as a belated wedding gift? He didn’t need to ask us twice.

When I picked up the phone to enquire about purchasing an extra E-Track for our second-hand system, I was impressed by how helpful Robin, Vitsœ’s planner, was – after all, ours wasn’t exactly the sale of the century. “Vitsœ customers tend to stay with us for life,” he said, cheerfully, as he arranged to dispatch the missing part. We installed the shelves in my tiny home-office and filled them with my back issues and files, alongside reams of Eric’s sheet music. We stood back to admire the result. Such an elegant system – and we’d be able to take it with us when we next moved!

But there wasn’t a next move. We had fallen in love with this pocket of London and eventually persuaded our landlord to sell us the flat, with its sweeping views that stretch from the Emirates football stadium to St Paul’s Cathedral to the London Eye. Hampstead Heath had become our substitute garden – a vital, green lung that brought balance and rhythm to our lives. In the summer, we would decamp there with friends, blankets and cool bags in tow, and throughout the year we swam in the ponds.

By then our first son, Alex, had arrived and my office had been requisitioned as his nursery. Freelancing from the kitchen table was proving unsustainable, so we climbed into the loft and, hunched beneath the mansard roof, wondered what we might make of it. In the evenings, Eric began sketching plans – a modest raising of the roof to create two new bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small terrace from which to admire that extraordinary view. A few nail-biting months later, planning permission was granted; the scaffolding went up, and we decamped to a nearby rental, leaving our long-suffering neighbours to endure the noise and dust (we attempted to atone with wine and flowers).

Eight months later, we were back – just in time for the arrival of our second son, Theo. The two boys shared one of the uppermost bedrooms and this called for canny storage. A new 606 shelving system was ordered, its expansive, quietly unobtrusive shelves bearing witness to their shifting passions: one week, a whole zoo of Schleich animals; the next, a traffic jam of Lego trucks, or papier mâché sculptures, still faintly damp. Like the best kind of parent, the system never judged the mess – it simply made room for it.

During this time, I was producing features for glossy magazines about fabulous homes around the world. My box file of ideas for our own ‘forever home’ grew ever thicker: a stylish kitchen with a vast island where friends would gather for margaritas; a living room with a towering fiddle leaf fig plant; a garden strung with fairy lights…

I’d spent so long mulling over my forever home that the realisation we were already living in it crept-up on me slowly – I’d simply have to get a little more inventive. We added a bench into our terrace and festooned it with lights. On my 50th birthday my friends surprised me with that fiddle-leaf fig.

But what about the kitchen? We looked at our cramped galley space and decided it was time to knock through into the living room. The old, unyielding, built-in shelving suddenly felt like it belonged to a different era. We needed something more forgiving. More adaptable. We knew exactly who to call.

Working again with Robin, we devised floor-to-ceiling shelving for the alcove to the right of the fireplace, while for the opposite side, beneath the eaves, more shelves became the framework to a wall-mounted television, helping it disappear into the background. At the end of the wall of kitchen cupboards, slimmer shelves provided storage for cookery books and novels, as well as house keys and bike lights (our entrance being far too bijou for a hallway table).

Our shelving has become an ever-evolving arrangement of things that make us happy: plants, a collection of shells, Indian reverse-glass paintings, a rotating display of vintage Bavarian ceramics. It quietly accommodates each new addition without fuss or fanfare, and in this sense, it nicely mirrors the organic evolution of our home itself.

This is the first year that both our boys are at university, and so – for the time being at least – it is just Eric and me, together with our whippet, Hugo. The way we use the flat has subtly shifted: I have returned to the kitchen to work, which in turn has prompted a fresh look at my office. I wanted a more flexible space – with a day-bed for extra guests – which meant moving the 606 shelves to a different wall, incorporating drawers so I could finally part with the filing unit.

I emailed Robin, to set the ball rolling, and a few hours later, his reply pinged back. “No problem Rachel, I look forward to catching up when you are ready.” Somehow, it felt quietly reassuring to know that the system – and the people behind it – were still there, patiently waiting for the next chapter.